The leading cause of lower back pain arises from rupture or degeneration of lumbar intervertebral discs. Pain in the lower extremities is caused by the compression of spinal nerve roots by a bulging disc, while lower back pain is caused by collapse of the disc and by the adverse effects of articulation weight through a damaged, unstable vertebral joint. One proposed method of managing these problems is to remove the problematic disc and replace it with a prosthetic disc that allows for the natural motion between the adjacent vertebrae (“a motion disc”).
As arthroplasty becomes a more common method of treating degenerative disc disease and low back pain, there will be a greater need to ensure that the implant is properly seated to avoid the occurrence of implant migration. However, as spine arthroplasty is relatively new to the global spine community, there is a lack of instrumentation available to assist the surgeons with intraoperative adjustments to the implant positioning.
Therefore, it is an objective of the present invention to provide an instrument that assists with the intraoperative or final positioning of a spine arthroplasty device to reduce the potential for implant migration.